Photo by Cavell from Facebook - used with permission
So today's post is about one of my pet likes.. fixing things. I was browsing Facebook's marketplace when I chanced upon an advert for a Gitzo tripod for $80! Intrigued, I read on, although the pictures explained exactly why the tripod was going for so little. A tripod that in it's day (+/- 2009) retailed for 800 POUNDS! The guy who I eventually bought it from said he paid over AUD 1000.. still a big chunk of change. As I am living away from my trusty Giotto tripod (Chinese clone of Gitzos), and still waiting for my Peak Design travel tripod, I was in need of some stability.. so to speak. So I met up with the seller and after a bit of haggling bought the tripod and head for a measely AUD60.. However the scars were deep and they were many. The centre column has completely crushed in the middle and was disintegrating at every attempt to raise or lower it into a position, where it could be tightened and put to good use. The leg joints were completely loose and 2 legs had lost their original bolts and were held together by your bog standard galvanised bolts, all rusty and not really doing the job. Still, could be worse...
Photos by Cavell from Facebook - used with permission
And indeed, when I got home, on looking closely at one of the legs, it too had been wacked, although thankfully the scar seemed mostly superficial.
Note to self, bring my reading glasses when examining photo equipment!
The most pressing problem was the centre column, which in it's present state was totally unusable, as the legs did in fact work, though in a wobbly fashion. So I immediately set about dismantling the legs.. Priorities! What I found both disheartened and delighted me. At some point this tripod had sat in the back of a car driving across Australia.. Only that could explain how everything had gotten loose and in some cases lost. Washers were missing, bolts replaced.. Anything that was a screw had some issue with it! Someone though had tried putting the legs back together at some point, and where there was once brass, we now had either a galvanised washer or none. Eventually I managed to get everything off, cleaned and then re-assembled the legs using the original parts to complete 2 of them, with all the "spare parts" used to complete the third leg - two perfectly working with all the right parts.. and one.. sadly a frankenstein. A quick visit to the "net" revealed that Gitzo, 10 years after releasing this tripod, still stocked spares!! I was totally amazed. Not only that, they had an exploded diagram of my tripod with all the spares marked.. You could practically build a new tripod out of parts!!!
Gitzo parts manual for GT1541OT
However Gitzo is not cheap, and the centre column and leg bolt set would set me back US165.. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, but I thought I could do better. Also, I wanted to use this tripod NOW, not wait for the vagueries of Christmas time shipping! So I started searching for suppliers of bolts and washers in Brisbane, Australia (I'm here now) and found a few, one just 10 minutes away. So at 2pm on a Friday afternoon I shot off down the road to try my luck..
Items required:
2 stainless steel button hex bolts M8 15mm long
2 brass washers 6.7x15x1.5mm
2 stainless washers
After 10 minutes the pregnant storekeeper handed me a little bag with part that approximated my need, but weren't exactly the right size. Note to self.. next time bring along a caliper. Total spend AUD 1.18. Well at least I wasn't too too out of pocket!
So as that hadn't gone quite as I hoped, with the hex bolt heads being a bit too small for the tripod, I headed to Bunnings Warehouse, where low prices are just the beginning..
While there I found larger philips head bolts.. not the most elegant solution nor as easy to tighten, however a much better fit for the tripod leg connection.. more brass washers just in case the first lot weren't perfect and then.. well, what about the tripod column?! Yes, I'd need to deal with that, so some glue, sandpaper and gaffer tape.. You'll find out just after the break..
Before we continue with the rebuild though, I thought I'd talk a little about this tripod, which doesn't have much in the way of literature about it. A long and almost fruitless Google search did however provide a few pointers.. I finally found one video with barely 15 likes that talks about how this tripod is built, which at only 4:44 is definitely worth a watch. If you don't have time, let me summarise.. Stainless steel parts so tripod can be used in the sea with salt water.. aptly called Ocean Traveller (the OT part of the GT1541OT model number). So this is a Gitzo traveller tripod, one of the first with reverse storage legs to make it smaller when packed, but almost as large as normal tripods when opened up and extended. I'm not a fan of tripods with big centre columns as they tend to sway in anything but a whisper of wind. Not this tripod aparently. The load rating is low at 4kg, but I believe that to be conservative.. Maybe not for large format, but medium format should definitely balance on top.
So back to the rebuild of this Ocean traveller.. The centre column.. Well, in it's present state it was all but useless..however I'd read somewhere about shortening broken carbon fibre tubes, and so set about doing just that. After a tap test (tapping the tube to hear changes in sound) I worked out that roughly half of the tube was damaged. I then proceded to wrap the gaffer tape around the tube along where I wanted to cut, and just next to that with scotchtape, leaving just a thin sliver where I would cut along. This would help prevent spintering as I cut through the fibres. I did a test cut into the broken tube first to understand how my handsaw would react with the carbon, and proceded to make a huge amount of dust as I cut into the tube. So if you're doing this at home, then make sure you wear a dust mask, have a cloth or piece of paper underneath. The cut was almost perfect, with very little splintering. The tapes were doing their job. I then cut into the channel I'd left uncovered between the 2 tapes and with bated breath proceded to make another almost perfect cut. Now I had little less than half a perfect carbon tube.. However the open end would be at risk and would need to be stoppered, so I took the off-cut end and removed the metal stopper, and then glued that with epoxy glue into the open end of the good part of the tube.. Perfect connection! And you can hardly see any glue. Wow, I must be getting good at this after years of model planes :-)
So we are done! Perfectly working tripod with a shorter centre column, ready and waiting for my camera to go take some pictures. But wait.. there's more..
Because I'm a bit particular about these things, the AUD1.18 bolts were not doing it for me, and so I decided to splurge on the Gitzo bolts and washers, which in actual fact were a bit wider and held the leg more securely, so off I went to their website, ordered the parts, and 2 weeks later they arrived, right in the middle of the Christmas rush! Well, Christmas came early for me, as the parts were spot on, and now I have a perfectly working, perfectly looking (short) Gitzo tripod.
With Gitzo spare parts, and the other consumables I ended up spending $60, and with the tripod at $60, a total of AUD120, or for those inclined to use greenbacks, around USD80.. Not bad for one of the highest quality tripods I've ever seen in my life.
And one last word about this ST version. The stainless steel used in this tripod is a special cast type which is non-porous and therefore even more rust resistant than ordinary stainless steel, and therefore weathers the elements perfectly. This tripod is 10 years old and not a spot of rust on it! Obviously this process must have been very expensive because Gitzo (now made by Manfrotto in Italy, after it's UK holding company closed the French factory down) no longer manufacture this type of steel. All their tripods have their standard greyish laquer paint, which is nowhere near as resistant to chips and bangs and marks, and eventually rust. Sad. You will not see a more beautiful tripod around than this one..
